Greetings and salutation once again, friends, family, passers-by, unkowns, anonymous fellows, and anybody that I could refer to as "dear reader". Yes, that would indeed be you =D
Before I get into anything serious (maybe coming up in a future blog post), some sort of prediction of the future is necessary.
I fully intend to be gone for the next few weeks, with the exception of June 6th, 7th, 21st, 22nd, and the 27th ends the extended leave. What could possibly take so long, you ask? Well I'm so glad you asked =D
Pine Cove this first week... Christian summer camp in Tyler, and I spend the entire week there. Isolated from the outside world. No news updates, no following people's blogs or anything of the sort. The next week I'm off to Oklahoma to visit my cousins and help out with their VBS -- did I mention they were here from Monday to Thursday morning. We had a lot of fun with them. I'm afraid I didn't get any pictures (I fully intend to haul a camera around for the next few weeks just to show you what happened and who was involved).... SO as I was saying, the next week after that (21st - 27th) I'll be out in central Texas at El Rancho Cima boy scout camp. That of course will be the icing on top of the cake, just one more wonderful trip to add to it all. And I'll be sure to sleep about 48 hours straight when I get back, just to make sure I'm ready for whatever next comes up.
So while I'd love to stick around and type until I can type no longer... I just can't do so for much longer. Perhaps I have already done so. I shall return
-Petr
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Trust?
What is this thing we call trust? Can it be defined by what we know? Google won't help here. Nor wikipedia. Believe me, I've tried.
The first time you meet somebody, perhaps see them in passing, little is known of them. They're merely one more person in a whole world of people, sometimes of little consequence to you merely because you don't know them. Possible exclusions include authority figures, ranging from your congressman to the queen to the chief of staff at the CIA. This person that you know little of may or may not know as much about you as you know about them. At some point, some force brings the two people into contact, making them communicate in some form. Perhaps a common interest bringing physical range down to a matter of feet. Perhaps a personal drive to meet and greet by one of the two parties involved. At what point does acquaintance become trust, and trust become friendship, if they can be considered consecutive? Perhaps, yet again, an outside force, force you into close proximity for extended periods of time. Maybe something drives a need for the ability to work together.
Again, at what point are you willing to trust the other person, even to a slight degree? IMHO, trust can be considered as on a scale. First impressions may have positive or negative effects on your trust of them, and second impressions can change everything you ever knew about them. Following contact provides a general experience of the other person, wide or narrow. By the time you really know them, they most likely know you quite well, you've seen them in action and in crisis, and you could blackmail them with their past. Do you trust them, and do they trust you? Is it possible to really trust them? My own experience tells me that time after time, it is only possible to trust one person after either you having trusted them with yourself, or the other way around.
Here comes a fact of life. It is impossible to get the full context of any human being, including yourself. Sure, you are the only human allowed in your own mind and the only to see your deepest thoughts (save God Himself), but even then, nobody is willing nor able to sound the depths of their own soul! So from this fact of life, it can be drawn that you will never fully know, nor even fully trust any human being, as both you and them are fallen, imperfect, sinful. Hold that thought.
So then take a person that you know well and trust, and now depart from them for a period of months, even years. As time prolongs the separation, it becomes easier to tolerate... and drives alienation. Both people change, and when you meet again, you know not who exactly this person is, what happened to that person you knew way back when, and they are having the same thoughts. It takes, yet again, one person actively trusting the other before the trust is mutual.
More can be derived from this thought of trust, that is, love (don't shimmy away, it's not that kind of "Love"). Behind this concept is much more than trust, both having their foundations in the time before the fall, even before creation in the Trinity. So then, how much love and trust can a fallen man truly have? The answer is that he will never have more than a fake, a shadow at the best. In a world of the fallen, only the man of God can truly have love as it is, can truly trust and be trusted, albeit imperfectly.
Coming back to the previous -- "... are fallen, imperfect, sinful". So then, what of the trust we are to have for God, in His Trinity, and so infinite? Enter His revelation, the Word of God, that book we know as the Bible. Every word written there (ok, maybe every phrase) is a revelation of who He is! Trust is based in knowledge, perhaps? We have the revelation of who God is, in all of what can be comprehended by a human mind.
Better yet, is not trust mutual? Know that the infinite, unchanging, everlasting God alone can truly know us as we are. And He alone had the greatest love to have Jesus (I don't know if 'send' is theologically correct, being Trinity, 'send' implying that the Son is separate... take it with a grain of salt) die an infinite death, taking the punishment of His church throughout the ages. (John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.")
And now, even as we betray his love daily, He trusts us, fallen, sinful, imperfect man to do his will on the earth! How amazing must this love be, how thorough this knowledge, how great this trust!
And for some anticlimax, I think of the people I consider at the moment to be like brothers and sisters, much like extended family (at least those who aren't actually extended family -- I'm thinking of my extended family as well as those others!), those who I would trust my life with. What happens as I don't see them, don't talk to them, know nothing of what God has done in their lives... is truly disheartening. Should I happen to meet them for a day, we will both find ourselves much different from when last we met, and trust must be built -- again. Sure, many happy greetings may happen, but if it really has been long enough to change them or I, I may find a different person in front of me.
Not to say that you shouldn't trust those people you know, or knew. In light of what has been said, and what God has done, we should be all the more willing to love people for who they are, not who they were, or who we think they are!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I dunno. People tend to think that I get philosophical late at night. I blame it on debate -- makes me question/examine the basic assumptions that life is founded upon, including but not limited to sociology. Humanity is so strangely unlike the rest of creation...
-Petr
The first time you meet somebody, perhaps see them in passing, little is known of them. They're merely one more person in a whole world of people, sometimes of little consequence to you merely because you don't know them. Possible exclusions include authority figures, ranging from your congressman to the queen to the chief of staff at the CIA. This person that you know little of may or may not know as much about you as you know about them. At some point, some force brings the two people into contact, making them communicate in some form. Perhaps a common interest bringing physical range down to a matter of feet. Perhaps a personal drive to meet and greet by one of the two parties involved. At what point does acquaintance become trust, and trust become friendship, if they can be considered consecutive? Perhaps, yet again, an outside force, force you into close proximity for extended periods of time. Maybe something drives a need for the ability to work together.
Again, at what point are you willing to trust the other person, even to a slight degree? IMHO, trust can be considered as on a scale. First impressions may have positive or negative effects on your trust of them, and second impressions can change everything you ever knew about them. Following contact provides a general experience of the other person, wide or narrow. By the time you really know them, they most likely know you quite well, you've seen them in action and in crisis, and you could blackmail them with their past. Do you trust them, and do they trust you? Is it possible to really trust them? My own experience tells me that time after time, it is only possible to trust one person after either you having trusted them with yourself, or the other way around.
Here comes a fact of life. It is impossible to get the full context of any human being, including yourself. Sure, you are the only human allowed in your own mind and the only to see your deepest thoughts (save God Himself), but even then, nobody is willing nor able to sound the depths of their own soul! So from this fact of life, it can be drawn that you will never fully know, nor even fully trust any human being, as both you and them are fallen, imperfect, sinful. Hold that thought.
So then take a person that you know well and trust, and now depart from them for a period of months, even years. As time prolongs the separation, it becomes easier to tolerate... and drives alienation. Both people change, and when you meet again, you know not who exactly this person is, what happened to that person you knew way back when, and they are having the same thoughts. It takes, yet again, one person actively trusting the other before the trust is mutual.
More can be derived from this thought of trust, that is, love (don't shimmy away, it's not that kind of "Love"). Behind this concept is much more than trust, both having their foundations in the time before the fall, even before creation in the Trinity. So then, how much love and trust can a fallen man truly have? The answer is that he will never have more than a fake, a shadow at the best. In a world of the fallen, only the man of God can truly have love as it is, can truly trust and be trusted, albeit imperfectly.
Coming back to the previous -- "... are fallen, imperfect, sinful". So then, what of the trust we are to have for God, in His Trinity, and so infinite? Enter His revelation, the Word of God, that book we know as the Bible. Every word written there (ok, maybe every phrase) is a revelation of who He is! Trust is based in knowledge, perhaps? We have the revelation of who God is, in all of what can be comprehended by a human mind.
Better yet, is not trust mutual? Know that the infinite, unchanging, everlasting God alone can truly know us as we are. And He alone had the greatest love to have Jesus (I don't know if 'send' is theologically correct, being Trinity, 'send' implying that the Son is separate... take it with a grain of salt) die an infinite death, taking the punishment of His church throughout the ages. (John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.")
And now, even as we betray his love daily, He trusts us, fallen, sinful, imperfect man to do his will on the earth! How amazing must this love be, how thorough this knowledge, how great this trust!
And for some anticlimax, I think of the people I consider at the moment to be like brothers and sisters, much like extended family (at least those who aren't actually extended family -- I'm thinking of my extended family as well as those others!), those who I would trust my life with. What happens as I don't see them, don't talk to them, know nothing of what God has done in their lives... is truly disheartening. Should I happen to meet them for a day, we will both find ourselves much different from when last we met, and trust must be built -- again. Sure, many happy greetings may happen, but if it really has been long enough to change them or I, I may find a different person in front of me.
Not to say that you shouldn't trust those people you know, or knew. In light of what has been said, and what God has done, we should be all the more willing to love people for who they are, not who they were, or who we think they are!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I dunno. People tend to think that I get philosophical late at night. I blame it on debate -- makes me question/examine the basic assumptions that life is founded upon, including but not limited to sociology. Humanity is so strangely unlike the rest of creation...
-Petr
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)